FRANCE: The Listener

One after another, French governments came
and went, but the shadowy figure of Roger Wybot stayed on, one of the
few permanent fixtures of the Fourth Republic. A former leader of the
French underground, Wybot had been made head of France's crack
counterintelligence service in 1945 when he was only 33. Under him, the
Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire spread so far, wide and
mysteriously that it was once described as "a gigantic spider web, in
the middle of which waits Wybot, his pipe in his mouth, in his
soundproof office on the Rue des Saussaies." Some said that...